First Three Weeks in the USA, and a Change of Plans
As most of you are probably aware, I'm currently in the USA. For those who don't know this yet: I'm a PhD student at the International Research Teaching Group in Kaiserslautern (Germany) which means that I'm supposed to spend 3 months a year at a university outside Germany (which is awesome!). Our partner schools are the University of Utah, the Arizona State University, and the UC (University of California) Davis. I am, however, currently at the University of Connecticut (UConn) for reasons I will get to later.
My travel in a nutshell: Germany - Storrs, CT - Seattle, WA - Davis, CA - Storrs, CT [- Davis, CA - Germany] [not yet]
Oct 1st to 13th UConn in Storrs, Connecticut
The first two weeks, I went to UConn, where I wanted to work with Tom Peters who is an expert in computational topology and geometry. At the end of the first week, I gave a talk on some research I've done over summer (deformation of surfaces preserving certain features) at the SIGMA seminar. After the talk, I had a conversation with Tom's student Ji during which we decided it would be fruitful to work on a joint paper. Now, originally, I had planned to work on an entirely different project during my time in the USA (of course not that different, it's still part of my PhD topic), so I was supposed to spend the majority of my time at UC Davis. With this change of focus, Hans, Tom and I decided that it makes more sense for me to stay in Connecticut. This meant that I had to find a flat in Storrs, do paperwork to change my itinerary, book flights etc.
The city (if it even qualifies as a city) of Storrs is a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. There's the university, a laundromat, a Starbucks... and that's it. No supermarket anywhere near campus (but two small convenience stores - rather expensive but hey, it's food.) During these two weeks, I lived in the hotel on campus, where I had a pretty large room with a slightly-larger-than-hotel-standard desk which was still too small for me, an armchair, a fridge, and a microwave. I was pretty excited about the microwave (which I hadn't known about in advance - I did order the fridge).... until I realised that it's pretty difficult to eat your instant noodles without tools. I managed to get my hands on a set of disposable cutlery though. Since the coffee cups in the bathroom (where I had a coffee machine) explicitly stated they're not microwaveable, I bought a really awesome dinosaur mug instead. When it gets hot, the dinosaurs turn to skeletons! ♥
There's not that much to do around UConn, but I took advantage of the entertainment I could get. The UConn farm is pretty nice, since they have a lot of animals (I'm being Captain Obvious). Saw horses, sheep and cows (both milk and meat), the chickens were hidden in houses. Here's a very cute sleeping calf.
I also made the mistake of ordering a Sundae at the UConn Dairy Bar. It was American size (over half a litre!), so I had to skip dinner (too full). Also, the girl apparently thought I'm nuts - possibly because I combined black raspberry, chocolate fudge, and pumpkin spice ice cream (hey, I like variation!). It was nice though. Except for the pumpkin spice stuff, I would rate that as "interesting".
Also, I managed to run into two parades by chance. First, I spontaneously joined the annual slut walk/march against victim blaming, still working on my sundae. After the parade on campus, there were two scheduled speeches which you can also view on youtube (one, two), as well as an open mic session which was not recorded (for obvious reasons). The testimonies ranged from sad and moving to utterly horrifying. The second parade was the homecoming parade. My personal highlight was the group that brought the cutest little baby husky (I should maybe add that the UConn students call themselves Huskies).
From the photos, you'll probably get the impression that the weather was pretty nice. It wasn't!! But I went out to take photos on the two days the sun was shining ;) As you can see, I was able to see Indian summer with all its beautiful colours :D
Oct 13th to 19th VisWeek in Seattle, Washington
As usual, the first two days of VisWeek were reserved for symposia, workshops etc. One of them is the BioVis symposium, where Peter and I presented posters. This meant that each of us had to give a 30-second "fast forward" talk on our research, produce a physical poster, and stand next to it during poster session to present that stuff to visitors. Since the fast forward talk session was pretty short, we were at our posters about an hour early. This meant that I had to talk about the same stuff again and again and again for over two hours! A lot of the same questions, too. I think I prefer papers ;)
The remaining four days consisted of listening to mostly SciVis talks and a handful of other talks (InfoVis, tutorials) for me. On the side, I also worked on a paper, and did all the paperwork to be able to go back to Connecticut. It turned out that it's cheaper to book an additional return flight within the US than to change my flight back to Germany, so I decided to travel back to the West coast a week before that flight.
Of course, I also met a lot of awesome people. And I realised that the awesomeness of conferences increases with the number of people you know in advance. At some point, the stress level may start to increase, too, but I haven't gotten to that point yet. (I hope it will take me another couple of years to get there.) It was pretty exhausting to be around people all day but it was also a lot of fun. I made a couple of new friends, some of which I'll meet again in January! Exciting :D They're from Heidelberg, and since that's not too far away, we have already made plans to visit each other's groups occasionally. I shared a room with one of them (Julia). Being a woman in tech makes it difficult to find roommates for conferences, so this is not the first time I've been teamed up with someone from a different university. XD
Between all the work, I also had a chance to see a bit of Seattle during my lunch breaks. One day, a group of us went down to the shore. From the large pier, you have a great view of Seattle's skyline! But what was even more awesome was seeing a beluga whale about 10 metres away from me. It must have got lost in the harbour area... Unfortunately, it only appeared once so I couldn't take a photo in time. And I only saw its tail region - I actually thought it's a dolphin since it seemed rather grey, but another person who saw it too insisted it's a beluga whale.
Another day, Peter and I took the monorail to the Space Needle, had lunch there, and walked around a bit. Since the weather was great, we walked back to the conference venue instead of riding the monorail. With more time at hand, I would have loved to see the glass garden! Or enjoy the view from the Space Needle. Next time :)
TBC;
Next: road trip down the West Coast (I101), Hartford, and Storrs part 2
More photos!
My travel in a nutshell: Germany - Storrs, CT - Seattle, WA - Davis, CA - Storrs, CT [- Davis, CA - Germany] [not yet]
Oct 1st to 13th UConn in Storrs, Connecticut
The first two weeks, I went to UConn, where I wanted to work with Tom Peters who is an expert in computational topology and geometry. At the end of the first week, I gave a talk on some research I've done over summer (deformation of surfaces preserving certain features) at the SIGMA seminar. After the talk, I had a conversation with Tom's student Ji during which we decided it would be fruitful to work on a joint paper. Now, originally, I had planned to work on an entirely different project during my time in the USA (of course not that different, it's still part of my PhD topic), so I was supposed to spend the majority of my time at UC Davis. With this change of focus, Hans, Tom and I decided that it makes more sense for me to stay in Connecticut. This meant that I had to find a flat in Storrs, do paperwork to change my itinerary, book flights etc.
The city (if it even qualifies as a city) of Storrs is a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. There's the university, a laundromat, a Starbucks... and that's it. No supermarket anywhere near campus (but two small convenience stores - rather expensive but hey, it's food.) During these two weeks, I lived in the hotel on campus, where I had a pretty large room with a slightly-larger-than-hotel-standard desk which was still too small for me, an armchair, a fridge, and a microwave. I was pretty excited about the microwave (which I hadn't known about in advance - I did order the fridge).... until I realised that it's pretty difficult to eat your instant noodles without tools. I managed to get my hands on a set of disposable cutlery though. Since the coffee cups in the bathroom (where I had a coffee machine) explicitly stated they're not microwaveable, I bought a really awesome dinosaur mug instead. When it gets hot, the dinosaurs turn to skeletons! ♥
There's not that much to do around UConn, but I took advantage of the entertainment I could get. The UConn farm is pretty nice, since they have a lot of animals (I'm being Captain Obvious). Saw horses, sheep and cows (both milk and meat), the chickens were hidden in houses. Here's a very cute sleeping calf.
I also made the mistake of ordering a Sundae at the UConn Dairy Bar. It was American size (over half a litre!), so I had to skip dinner (too full). Also, the girl apparently thought I'm nuts - possibly because I combined black raspberry, chocolate fudge, and pumpkin spice ice cream (hey, I like variation!). It was nice though. Except for the pumpkin spice stuff, I would rate that as "interesting".
Also, I managed to run into two parades by chance. First, I spontaneously joined the annual slut walk/march against victim blaming, still working on my sundae. After the parade on campus, there were two scheduled speeches which you can also view on youtube (one, two), as well as an open mic session which was not recorded (for obvious reasons). The testimonies ranged from sad and moving to utterly horrifying. The second parade was the homecoming parade. My personal highlight was the group that brought the cutest little baby husky (I should maybe add that the UConn students call themselves Huskies).
From the photos, you'll probably get the impression that the weather was pretty nice. It wasn't!! But I went out to take photos on the two days the sun was shining ;) As you can see, I was able to see Indian summer with all its beautiful colours :D
Oct 13th to 19th VisWeek in Seattle, Washington
As usual, the first two days of VisWeek were reserved for symposia, workshops etc. One of them is the BioVis symposium, where Peter and I presented posters. This meant that each of us had to give a 30-second "fast forward" talk on our research, produce a physical poster, and stand next to it during poster session to present that stuff to visitors. Since the fast forward talk session was pretty short, we were at our posters about an hour early. This meant that I had to talk about the same stuff again and again and again for over two hours! A lot of the same questions, too. I think I prefer papers ;)
The remaining four days consisted of listening to mostly SciVis talks and a handful of other talks (InfoVis, tutorials) for me. On the side, I also worked on a paper, and did all the paperwork to be able to go back to Connecticut. It turned out that it's cheaper to book an additional return flight within the US than to change my flight back to Germany, so I decided to travel back to the West coast a week before that flight.
Of course, I also met a lot of awesome people. And I realised that the awesomeness of conferences increases with the number of people you know in advance. At some point, the stress level may start to increase, too, but I haven't gotten to that point yet. (I hope it will take me another couple of years to get there.) It was pretty exhausting to be around people all day but it was also a lot of fun. I made a couple of new friends, some of which I'll meet again in January! Exciting :D They're from Heidelberg, and since that's not too far away, we have already made plans to visit each other's groups occasionally. I shared a room with one of them (Julia). Being a woman in tech makes it difficult to find roommates for conferences, so this is not the first time I've been teamed up with someone from a different university. XD
Between all the work, I also had a chance to see a bit of Seattle during my lunch breaks. One day, a group of us went down to the shore. From the large pier, you have a great view of Seattle's skyline! But what was even more awesome was seeing a beluga whale about 10 metres away from me. It must have got lost in the harbour area... Unfortunately, it only appeared once so I couldn't take a photo in time. And I only saw its tail region - I actually thought it's a dolphin since it seemed rather grey, but another person who saw it too insisted it's a beluga whale.
Another day, Peter and I took the monorail to the Space Needle, had lunch there, and walked around a bit. Since the weather was great, we walked back to the conference venue instead of riding the monorail. With more time at hand, I would have loved to see the glass garden! Or enjoy the view from the Space Needle. Next time :)
TBC;
Next: road trip down the West Coast (I101), Hartford, and Storrs part 2
More photos!